DAILY PRESS BRIEFING BY THE OFFICE OF THE SPOKESMAN FOR THE SECRETARY-GENERAL

The following is a near-verbatim transcript of today's noon briefing by Manouel de Almeida e Silva, Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, and Susan Markham, Spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly.

Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary General

Hi.  Good afternoon. 

**Secretary-General in South Asia

I will start with the Secretary-General's visit to South Asia.  My notes are a little bit long because, as you know, I’ll do three days here in just a few minutes. 

The Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan arrived this evening in Kathmandu, Nepal, after having concluded his visit to Pakistan.

This morning the Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan visited the Shamshatoo refugee camp, which is a temporary home to some 70,000 Afghan refugees.  After walking through the camp, the Secretary-General met with the elders and in an informal conversation with them, the Secretary-General thanked them for working so cooperatively with United Nations aid workers in the camp.  He told them that “we are doing our best to get as much assistance to you as possible, both here in Pakistan and Afghanistan for those who are in need and are displaced.  We will not forget you”, he concluded.

The visit to the Jalozai camp, which we had announced -- the other refugee camp in that area –- was cancelled by the Pakistani Government.  In answer to a question by a journalist, the Secretary-General said “what is important is the discussion I had with the Government yesterday where they will work with us to help the refugees in this country, which would also mean that we have to create conditions that will make their lives bearable until such a time as they are able to return.  And at the same time", the Secretary-General went on, “as I indicated, we are going to help the displaced people within Afghanistan and expand our activities within that country so that they do not have an inducement to want to leave their country or cross the border to come here”.

The Secretary-General left Shamshatoo by helicopter going closer to the Afghanistan border and stopping at the entry to the Khyber Pass.  There he encountered a 20-truck convoy of the World Food Programme (WFP) which was on its way to deliver 300 tons of wheat flour to a bakery project in Kabul.

On Sunday, the first day of his visit to Pakistan –- as you know he arrived there Saturday -- the Secretary-General met with President Mohammad Rafiq Tarar.  They discussed the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan and the plight of Afghan refugees in Pakistan.  He also met with Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and the situation of Afghan refugees was the main topic of discussion, as well.

On leaving the Foreign Ministry, the Secretary-General was met by a group of Kashmiri women who presented him with a written request to look into human rights violations in Kashmir.

The Secretary-General later met with his senior advisers on the ground, Francesc Vendrell and Erick de Mul, to review the political situation in Afghanistan.  In the late afternoon he met with the Taliban “Foreign Minister” Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil with whom he raised the issue of the Taliban decree to destroy all pre-Islamic statues in Afghanistan.  Mr. Mutawakil confirmed the wholesale destruction of artifacts in Afghanistan deemed offensive to Islam.  The Secretary-General pressed the Taliban official hard on this issue, warning that the action would only make it more difficult for the Taliban to win international recognition.

In the evening, the Secretary-General met with Pakistan’s Chief Executive, Pervez Musharraf.  In talks that lasted over an hour, the two discussed the situation in Kashmir, the political and humanitarian aspects of the Afghanistan issue, Pakistan’s transition to democracy, the Middle East, Iraq and nuclear proliferation.

That same evening, the Chief Executive hosted a dinner in honour of the Secretary-General and Mrs. Annan, and the Secretary-General delivered a short address, in the form of a toast.  He praised the Pakistanis on peacekeeping, encouraged them on education, and, referring to Pakistan's democratization process, said "I wish you well in your initiative to start with political devolution, as a way to insure that a renewed democracy will derive legitimacy and lasting support from the grass roots".

During the visit to Pakistan, Mrs. Annan visited a rural health centre in Tarlai, near Islamabad, where she was briefed on the country-wide polio eradication programme, and she administered polio drops to approximately

10 children.  Pakistan, as you might know, is part of the largest-remaining polio virus reservoir in the world.  Ridding Pakistan of polio is critical to the success of the United Nations global effort to eradicate polio.  Later that same day, she also visited the National Institute for Health in Islamabad.

We have available in our Office a number of transcripts of statements by the Secretary-General, and of press encounters.  They are also available on our Web site.  You have the statement he made upon arrival in Islamabad and the questions he answered, then the press encounter he had following his meeting with the Chief Executive, the toast I just mentioned at the dinner hosted by the Chief Executive, and the comments he made today in the meeting with the elders in the refugee camp.

**New Emergency Appeal for Afghans

Still on Afghanistan, I'd like to bring to your attention that the WFP today launched an appeal for a $76 million emergency operation to save millions of people in Afghanistan from starvation.  The WFP said, in a press release, the new emergency appeal will target 3.8 million people for one year.

Afghanistan -- Sanctions

And still on Afghanistan, out today on the racks is a Security Council document, which is a letter from the Secretary-General addressed to the Council President with the names of a committee which he was requested to establish in Resolution 1333 on Afghanistan.  You'll recall that this is the resolution on sanctions.

The five-member committee of experts chaired by Haile Menkerios of Eritrea was set up to see how the arms embargo and the closure of terrorist training camps, demanded in the resolution, can be monitored.

**Security Council

The Security Council has scheduled closed consultations at 4 p.m. today on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  Council members expect to be briefed by Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean Marie Guéhenno on recent developments there.

**Democratic Republic of the Congo

Meanwhile on the ground, the United Nations Mission in the DRC issued a statement today deploring ceasefire violations in Equateur Province.  The United Nations Mission said that the most recent incident occurred on Sunday, when a river ferry in the Bolomba area came under attack.  Some 20 people were wounded, it said.

The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for the DRC, Kamel Morjane, and the Force Commander, General Mountaga Diallo, appealed for all parties to refrain from action that could jeopardize the disengagement of troops and deployment of United Nations forces.

Meanwhile, the Special Rappporteur for the DRC, Roberto Garretón, has begun his mission to the Congo.

**UNMEE

Since we are talking about peacekeeping missions, let me just bring to your attention that today, at 3 p.m., there will be troop-contributors’ meeting for the countries that contribute troops to the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea.  The Special Representative for the Secretary-General for Ethiopia and Eritrea, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, will be present.

Tomorrow, the Council will hold consultations on the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, at which it will receive a briefing by Mr. Legwaila, who also expects to talk to the press immediately following the Council's consultations.

**International Criminal Tribunal

Moving now to Europe, the former mayor of the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac today became the first Yugoslav national to turn himself over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.  Blagoje Simic was indicted by the Tribunal, along with five others, for war crimes committed in Bosanski Samac in 1992, and he met today with Tribunal Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte shortly after arriving in The Hague.

In a statement issued today, copies of which we have upstairs, Ms. Del Ponte said, "This is an unconditional surrender.  No negotiation took place; no special conditions were granted."  She added that, although Simic's surrender to the Tribunal, which was carried out with the knowledge and approval of the authorities in Serbia, is an "encouraging signal", she still expects the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to take positive action on the arrest and transfer of those indicted by the Tribunal.

**Kosovo

Today’s briefing notes from the United Nations mission in Kosovo are available in our Office upstairs.  As you know, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Kosovo, Hans Haekkerup, will be in town starting Wednesday for the Friday meeting in the Security Council.  It appears that the KFOR Commander, Lieutenant General Carlo Cabigiosu, will not be coming to New York.  Meanwhile, the border between Kosovo and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia remains closed to commercial traffic.

**Middle East

Today in Cairo, Peter Hansen, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), warned the foreign ministers of the League of Arab States that his agency needs urgent funding because its financial situation "has reached rock bottom".  Mr. Hansen noted that the Relief and Works Agency currently spends only about $70 for every Palestinian refugee it assists, down from about $200 per refugee in the 1970s.

He particularly drew attention to economic needs in the West Bank and Gaza, where unemployment has soared to more than 40 per cent today, and for which the Agency launched a new emergency appeal for $37 million in late February.  So far, he said, there has been little response to the latest appeal.

He noted that, during the recent crisis, some refugee shelters and schools have been severely damaged, while some Agency vehicles and staff were shot at in broad daylight when their United Nations  markings were clearly visible.  Nevertheless, Mr. Hansen added, the Agency has managed to provide emergency food aid to more than 200,000 needy families in Gaza and the West Bank.  We expect to have, in the following moments, copies of Hansen's comments at the Arab League meeting.  We'll have them available in our Office.

**UNFPA

The Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Thoraya Obeid, is in London today on her first official visit to the United Kingdom.  Her visit began with a meeting with Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, and she will also attend a meeting on population and development at the House of Commons today.

**Commission on Sustainable Development

The Commission on Sustainable Development today began its inter-sessional meeting on "information for decisions".  As part of this week’s events on sustainable development, Australia's delegation is organizing an event tomorrow on case studies concerning knowledge-gathering on environmental issues, from 1:15 to 2:45 p.m. in the Economic and Social Council Chamber.

**Press Releases

The World Food Programme (WFP) today appealed to donors to fund a

$2.7 million operation to feed nearly 700,000 internally displaced persons and refugees in Uganda over the next several months.  A press release is available in our Office with more details.

Also, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned today that excessive hunting is causing the population of wild animals to dwindle and is creating a crisis in the supply of "bush meat", and it has a press release with more information on that.

Also upstairs is a press release from the United Nations Volunteers programme about the efforts of 20 United Nations volunteers to help assess needs and coordinate relief efforts following the flooding in central Mozambique.

**Press Conferences

I'm approaching the end of my briefing to tell you about two press conferences.

Today, 12 March, at 3:15 p.m., there will be a press conference in this room, given by Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock of the United Kingdom and Jose Ramos-Horta, Foreign Minister of the East Timor Transitional Authority.  They will brief on the regional perspectives on the Brahimi report.

And tomorrow, immediately after his briefing to the Security Council, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Eritrea/Ethiopia will brief the press.

Finally, I have an announcement here from the Department of Public Information that the World Chronicle Programme with Peter Bridgewater, Director of the Division of Ecological Sciences at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), will be shown today on in-house television channel 3 or 31.  That will be at 2:30 this afternoon.

Do you have any questions before we go on to Sue?

**Questions and Answers

Question:  Did the Taliban, when they met with the Secretary-General, have some demands?

Spokesman:  No, I don't have information on any demands.

Question:  Could you tell me about the human rights petition?

Spokesman:  All I have to tell you is what I told you, that this group of women presented him with a written request for him to look into human rights violations in Kashmir.  I don't have any more details on that.  Sue?

Spokeswoman for the President of the General Assembly

Thank you.

This morning, the President presided over the Working Group on Security Council Reform.  It was a closed meeting.  The discussion was on the so-called

“cluster one” issues, on the basis of a conference room paper that the Bureau had submitted to the Working Group on Decision-Making in the Security Council, concerning the veto as a voting instrument of the Security Council.  The Working Group will meet again tomorrow, and, in fact, each morning this week except for Wednesday, when it will meet in the afternoon.  Later this week, it is supposed to take up the “cluster two” issues, which are the organizational issues.

On Wednesday morning, there will be a plenary meeting of the General Assembly to elect the judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.  I don't think the documents are out yet, but they should be out later today.

We also have a plenary meeting on Friday afternoon.  It is scheduled to take up a number of pending issues, including draft resolutions from the Preparatory Committee (prepcom) of the International Conference on Financing for Development and also the prepcom of the General Assembly's special session on the outcome of the Habitat II Conference.  Both of these prepcoms were held last month.

On Thursday, the President of the General Assembly will give the closing remarks at a seminar on the Aland Islands.  The seminar is being held in the Dag Hammarskjöld Auditorium.  The Aland Islands are located in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden.  They're now under Finland's sovereignty.  But in 1921, the League of Nations established international guarantees for their autonomy and a Convention on the Demilitarization and Neutrality of the Aland Islands.  Apparently, in the aftermath of this decision by the League of Nations, no one was particularly happy, not Finland, Sweden nor the Aland Islands political activists.  But, nevertheless, the solution established in 1921 has remained and proven sustainable and beneficial for all.

The purpose of the seminar is to explore the potential of this example for the settlement of contemporary disputes which have a regional or ethnic connotation, or involve issues concerning the treatment of minorities.  As I said, the President will give the closing statement, but also participating in the seminar is Martti Ahtisaari, the former President of Finland who, you will remember, was a former senior United Nations official, as well.  There will be a press conference on Thursday in relation to the seminar, but I'm not sure of the time yet.  We can provide you with more information if you are interested. 

Thank you very much.  That's all I have.

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